Country Music Week boosted London economy by $8.4 million, research says

Clayton Bellamy of The Road Hammers and Kelly Prescott perform with The Dead Flowers on an outdoor stage during the Canadian Country Music Association's Country Music Week at Budweiser Gardens in London, Ont. on Saturday September 10, 2016. (Free Press file photo)

The Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) says its week-long celebration in London last summer gave the city’s economy an $8.4-million boost.

An assessment by the Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance shows 18,500 music fans and industry people took in the events during Country Music Week 2016 in London, which culminated in the CCMA Awards show Sept. 11, broadcast to a national audience and attended by 7,800.

“It was a tremendous success and we’d love to have it back,” Chris Campbell, chair of the host committee and director of culture and entertainment tourism for Tourism London, said Monday.

“We would definitely be interest in pursuing this event (again) and when the time is right, we’ll be working on it.”

More than 4,900 people came into London over the week, which is part industry conference and part music festiva, the CCMA said.

Tickets for the awards show sold out in minutes, the fastest in the CCMA’s history.

“To bring significant economic value to our host city and province, and to have maintained cultural significance in the Canadian arts landscape for 40 years, is a testament to the Canadians from coast to coast who join us in embracing country music,”CCMA president Don Green said in a news release.

Festivals such as the Country Music Week are “vital” to the province’s economy, said Ontario Tourism Minister Eleanor McMahon,.

“This event was no exception,” she said in a statement. “Country Music Week 2016 created local jobs, boosted the economy, attracted tourists and was a great opportunity to showcase our province’s thriving arts and culture scene.”

Mayor Matt Brown called London “a music city through and through,” saying the numbers London posted holding its largest non-sporting event “prove we are ready to roll out the red carpet for more world-class events.”

One of the keys to the event’s success, which included performances and workshops, is that London is neither too big nor too small, some say.

“Everything was walkable,” said Leigh Robert, the music director for radio station Country 104 in London. “And the fact that everything was downtown.”

Robert said the feedback she got from the musicians, programmers and promoters who visited London was all positive.

It was as if the entire country music industry temporarily took up quarters in London, she said.

The best of Canadian country music was all in a single place for a week. “It’s the Canadian answer to Nashville,” Robert said.

It was the type of event where ordinary Londoners could run into big-name music stars on the street.

Robert recalls strolling into the Bull and Barrel, the self-styled “urban saloon” on Talbot Street, and running into singer Aaron Pritchett.

One of the goals for organizers was finding a way to include everyone who came downtown that week, whether they’d bought a ticket to the awards ceremony or not, said Janette MacDonald, head of Dowtown London and who was also on the host committee.

She points to the free stage on Talbot Street as a key.

“That really put it over the edge,” she said. Also important was having everyone at the table — media, parking, transportation and so on. And having daily debriefings to keep lines of communications open between team members.

“I think the important thing to have is that core team in the city,” she said.

Also crucial? Infrastructure.

“I think the only reason we were able to pull it off was Budweiser Gardens,” MacDonald noted.

John Winston, the head of Tourism London, said while London has hosted big sporting events in the past, this was the first artistic showcase on such a big scale held here.

“It really, really showcased London as a destination for cultural events. It was an unequivocal success,” he said.

Winston met people from Nashville, Michigan, the Greater Toronto Area and Calgary during the week.

“You have to show a tremendous amount of enthusiasm,” he said, adding it helps to “put forward as sense of excellence.”

What also can’t be discounted is the innate friendliness and decency of Londoners. “These folks really bought into the city,” he said of the thousands of visitors to London.

And the lessons learned from staging the CCMAs will go a long way, Winston believes.

“It laid the groundwork, quite frankly, for other major events. With this event, it was sort of a test bed, if you will.”

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